


Looking For My Happiness Now

by DragonBandit



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-02-16 08:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18688069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonBandit/pseuds/DragonBandit
Summary: A mishap reverts Peter's body to his 16 year old self. But this story is about Gwen Stacy.





	Looking For My Happiness Now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spellboundreader316](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spellboundreader316/gifts).



> I really hope that you like this. I know that it sort of goes at the tropes you like sideways. 
> 
> References to the greater Spiderman canons of the Spiderman comics, and Spider-Gwen comics. So spoilers beware. The Spider-Gwen is referenced within Spiderverse itself, while the Spiderman one is fairly common knowledge. 
> 
> Spiderman comics: Gwen falls off Brooklyn bridge, resulting in Spiderman trying to save her and inadvertendly snapping her neck instead.  
> Spider-Gwen comics: Peter injects himself with some science potion to give himself superpowers. It doesn't work, instead turning him into a giant lizard that Gwen has to take down. Peter dies very shortly after he reverts back to his human self.

Peter crashes through the open skylight of his apartment, ripping off his costume as he stumbles through the haphazardly placed furniture. He blindly reaches for the first aid kit he keeps over the bathroom sink next to his toothbrush and razor. Said razor slices through his hand before Peter finds the box.

“Stupid Mysterio and his stupid temporary blindness spells,” Peter sifts through the bandaids, pills and alcohol wipes that cover the other, more specialised things that he keeps stocked. Is it just him, or is his voice echoing strangely off the tile? “Where’s that all purpose magic-is-total-bullshit-whatever-I-called-it antidote? I know I put some in here after the last time he showed up, come on. I do not want to wait for super healing to get my eyes up and running—-there it is!”

He pulls out the small box of pills out of the first aid kid, double checking that he’s grabbed the bottle with the round lid, and not the one with an octagon lid before he pours four pills into his hand and knocks them all back in a single gulp.

His vision comes back in patches. Firs the sunlight that streams through the tiny, frosted glass window on Peter’s left. Then the unfortunately patterned tiled walls and floor. Until finally—-

“Ah, fuck.” In the mirror, a sixteen year old Peter stares back at him. Complete with the teenage acne Peter had been glad to see the last off, a nose he hadn’t grown into, and a look of pure horror. “This better wear odd before that job interview I’ve gotta go to.”

* * *

Mysterio vanishes into thin air after turning Peter into a teenager. Licking his wounds, Peter assumes, considering the cracked helmet he left that meeting with. Plotting whatever crazy plans that Spiderman will inevitably foil within a few short hours of the half-rate magician revealing them. In the meantime, Peter’s stuck waiting for the magic to wear off on it’s own. (local experts say a week or two) while still being New York’s one and only Spiderman.

Well, in this dimension at least.

In some other dimension along the multiverse, Peter’s high-fiving Miles as he pulls off his mask to eat hot-dogs on the top of an apartment complex that overlooks Brooklyn Bridge.

“So how’s New York?” Peter asks.

“Dude, gross,” Miles says. “Swallow before you talk, why don’t you?” Then, “What happened to your face? And your voice, and, everything?”

“Oh you know, shaved a bit, worked out. Got into a fight with an angry magician. You know how it is.”

Miles eyes are narrowed, and he pushes himself along the railing of the roof to press his face uncomfortably close to Peter’s. In turn, Peter leans back, eyebrows raised under the sudden scrutiny.

“You look…. Younger. Like you’re almost my age.” There’s another look across Peter’s new face, “maybe a little older.”

Peter gently puts a hand to the kids chest and pushes him back. “Personal space Miles.” He takes another bite of the hot dog. “Far as I can tell I’m not a day over sixteen.”

“Huh,” Miles proclaims. “Are you gonna be stuck like that?”

“You think, this is a really great hot dog. Did you get it from the cart that sets up shop outside the bodega on 5th because I have got to tell you, if it is I am moving to your universe just for the better hot dog selection because this? Is gold. Literal, actual, pinnacle of hot dogs everywhere, gold.”

Miles rolls his eyes and calls Peter the weirdest adult he knows.

“You know you’re including a walking, talking, anthropomorphic pig in all that, right?” Peter asks.

“That’s my point!”

“Did someone say my name?” Peter Porker, aka: the one and only Spider-Ham says, as he swings through a dimensional portal and steals the last of Peter’s hot dog.

“Hey!”

The last of Peter’s hot dog meets its demise in Porker’s bottomless pit of a stomach. Porker makes a truly obscene noise of pleasure, eyes closing with the sensory delight that he just gulped down. Then his eyes pop open, and he gets a good, long look at Peter’s face. “What happened to you?”

Peter rolls his eyes, leaning back on his palms. “Oh no, I am not going to be explaining this piecemeal. You’ll have to wait for the rest of the gang to get here for this story.”

A second later Noir and the new, improved, deadlier SP//DR appear out of their own portals to join the other three on the rooftop. Immediately, Porker turns expectantly to Peter.

“You’re missing Gwen,” Peter says, “nice try.”

“Gwen’s gonna be late,” Peni says. “What happened to you?”

“You know I’m really not going to say this story multiple times,” Peter says.

“Uh, yeah you are.” Miles says. There’s a grin spread all the way across his face. Shamelessly revelling in Peter’s suffering.

“You know, I don’t think I like your tone, you man.” Peter says, looking down his nose at Miles. Thank god for the growth spurt he had at fifteen.

Miles blinks, mouth going slack before he bursts into loud, bright laughter. “Man, you can’t say stuff like that! Not when you’ve got that babyface on!”

“Is that so?” Peter leans forwards, echoing Miles’ move from earlier. Getting right up in the kid’s personal space.

Miles’ grin turns distinctly nervous. Spider-sense must be pinging in the back of his head, just enough to make him worried. For good reason too, because after a long, baited three seconds of silence where Peter and Miles just stare at each other—-minus of course for Noir and Peni’s disturbingly causual conversation about the differences in firearms between their two respective dimensions in the background—-Peter pounces.

The shriek that comes out of Miles’ mouth is high enough to make Peter’s ears bleed.

Soon the air is filled with the Peter’s cackling laughter: “Is this something else I can’t do? Huh kid?” and Miles’ own shouted protests as Peter gives him the worst noogie of his life. They turn into a tangled mass of flailing limbs atop the rooftop. The noogie turning into a makeshift sparring lesson save for the tickles instead of punches and kicks.

“Okay,” Gwen says, her blue pumps entering Peter’s field of vision from where he’s rolling on the floor with Miles. “Did I miss the Peter’s gone absolutely crazy text?”

“Gwen! Save me!” Miles laughs.

Peter looks up, effortlessly pinning Miles to the concrete with one a hand. A smile crinkles up his eyes as he aims a grin at the girl. Gwen takes one look at him and the easy slouch in her shoulders disappears as she freezes like a deer in front of headlights.

“Peter?” Gwen says, a quaver in her voice that means she’s trying not to cry.

“Hey Gwendy,” The nickname just slips out. Muscle memory.

They both flinch.

Gwen’s head shakes. She steps backwards and up, onto the ledge of the roof. “I—I can’t. I can’t do this.” She turns on her heel, dropping off the roof and swinging away. A black and white ghost in the early evening bustle of the city. With a sinking stomach, Peter tracks her progress to its conclusion: Gwen perched at the very apex of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Of all the places…

Behind him, Noir says, “You really spooked her with that new mug of yours.” At the same time, Miles and Peni chorus, “Gwendy?”

“It’s a nickname.” Peter swallows. “Was. Was a nickname.” For another Gwen Stacy.

Miles pushes Peter’s hand off his chest, sitting up. “I think I better go and talk to her.” He says, rolling up onto his feet and hopping up onto the ledge. “Make sure she’s okay, you know.”

As if there’s ever a way to make this okay. Why did Peter have to be so stupid? But he nods his head, only dimly aware that Miles has already jumped off the roof to follow Gwen’s path on his own web-lines.

“He’s getting better at that,” Peter says, as Miles narrowly misses getting brained by a passing drone.

Noir puts a heavy hand on Peter’s shoulder, and Peter lets himself be turned away from the two figures on the bridge.

* * *

Gwen tears off her mask like it’s suffocating her. The air up this high is clean, free of the smog from the endless river of cars below her. It just makes her want to cry all the more. She swipes furiously at her face, curling in on herself. It’s just the sting of fresh air against her eyeballs. Nothing more.

Her spider-sense tingles when Miles sings up next to her.

“Hey,” Miles says.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Gwen says, quick and harsh, filled with unshed tears. That sends a hot flush of anger up her cheeks. Surely she’s out of tears for Peter-freaking-Parker by now?

“Okay. That’s absolutely okay.” Miles splays out his fingers, hand held out from his chest like a flag of surrender. “But uh, if you change your mind, or decide you want something else, I’m right here. Okay?”

Gwen doesn’t answer him. There’s a big part of her waiting for Miles to give up and go away, but instead he just perches on the top of the bridge with her. Gwen still as a statue, her stomach full of ice. Miles swinging his feet back and forth into the open air. Seagull’s crow up above their heads. A million voices turn into the background soup that is New York. Gwen’s chest is hollow. The back of her eyes stinging. An itch that sits in the center of her chest below the black V of her costume.

“He was my best friend,” Gwen says into the silence, surprising herself. “Me, Peter and Harry against the world. Then I got bit by a radioactive spider and everything changed.”

Next to her, Miles is quiet, head tilted towards her, his dark eyes filled with their own terrible understanding. Gwen can’t help being grateful. She’s not sure she’d be able to get this out at all if it turned into a conversation. And suddenly, it’s all too important to get this out, before it suffocates her.

“I didn’t even think about not telling Peter. Is that weird? Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who didn’t hide their powers from everyone. I didn’t tell everyone else, but I did tell my best friend.” She swallows, “He said—-” the rest of it gets stuck. Ashes clogging up her voice box. “He—-He said that he just wanted to be just like me. A hero.”

The tears pricking at the corners of her eyes fall down her cheeks.

“He was only 16. Worst prom night ever,” A joke, that turns into a sobbing laugh.

Miles says, “Oh,” a quiet revelation. “That’s what got you so freaked out earlier.”

Gwen can only nod, her throat too closed up to talk.

Miles lets out a heavy breath. “Feel free to say no but, can I give you a hug? You look like you could really use one.”

The smile that comes to Gwen’s lips is overly fragile. It feels wrong on her face, like she’s just one step away from cracking in two. In answer she leans towards Miles, until her shoulder gently impacts with his chest. His arms loop around her, solid and secure and full of a safety that Gwen doesn’t deserve. She tucks her head against Miles’. The buzzed side of her hair ticking her where Mile’s curls brush against her scalp.

“It sucks that your Peter isn’t around anymore.” Gwen feels Miles’ nose wrinkle. “It sounds really dumb when I say it like that but it is. It does. It super sucks.”

Despite herself, the little smile on Gwen’s face grows. Something about the way he says it is just so _Miles_. Her dork of a friend who wormed his way through Gwen’s stony heart to the mushy, fragile center of it without even trying.

“Super sucks,” Gwen agrees, quiet against Miles’ ear. “You know, I think he would have liked you.”

“Yeah?”

Gwen can so easily picture it. The four of them—-Gwen, Miles, Harry and Peter—-gathered around the Parker’s IKEA brand dinner table, Peter at the head surrounded by heavy books and papers, the cardboard walls of the GM screen just not tall enough to hide his grin. The rest of them squashed together at the other end of the table. Harry and Gwen flanking Miles on either side as they knocked elbows together, grabbing and spilling snacks and pop as they argued over the best way to take out the goblins or trolls or whatever that Peter had put in front of them this time. And then Miles, reaching for a d20 and asking to roll persuasion to find out what the goblin’s deal even was to begin with.

“Yeah,” Gwen says.

“Tha’s cool.”

* * *

By the time Peter talks himself up into swinging onto the bridge, the air is filled with fragile laughter. Under his hands, the metal of the bridge reverberates with a quick 4/4 beat.

“You gotta face it tiger, face it tiger, face it tiger!” Miles and Gwen crow, Gwen’s hands blurs as she taps out a drum solo against the bridge. Her eyes are bright, blue and shining with both laughter and, when Peter really looks, unshed tears.

Guilt sits in Peter’s stomach like a stone.

“Hey kids.”

“Hey Peter!” Miles says, twisting to smile at him, but Peter is watching how the light dims from Gwen’s eyes.

Her own, “Hey Peter,” is a whole lot quieter than Gwen should ever be.

His fault. Always his fault.

“Can we talk?” He directs at Gwen. “Alone,” he adds, when he noticed Miles get just a little too comfy on the railings. Miles wrinkles his nose at Peter, and Peter raises an eyebrow back. Too bad kid, this isn’t a conversation that needs, or wants, eavesdroppers. The two of them turn to Gwen for the final verdict.

Gwen’s bottom lip disappears between her teeth, “I—-”

Spider Sense rings out loud in the back of Peter’s head. Below them there’s a yell. “He’s got a gun!”

“---Hold that thought,” Gwen says and swan dives off the bridge.

Peter’s heart stops.

This bridge. _The bridge,_ and Gwen falling, and Peter too slow, too proud, too stupid.

A line of webbing shoots up, hitting the metal under Peter’s hand. On the other end of it, Gwen tumbles down like a skilled aerialist playing with silk scarves.

“Well?” She yells up at the two of them, “You gonna help or just sit on your lazy butts and watch?”

Peter shakes his head, clearing his mind of a crack of bone that won’t come. He pulls his mask back down over his face, and joins the fray below.

* * *

After, Gwen says, “That was something else.” Peter can’t help but agree.

Somewhere, somehow, the two of them had just clicked. Gwen’s crazy half ballet, half MMA moves mixing perfectly with Peter’s 17 year old muscle memory. The two of them look at each other, wide-eyed and inscrutable thank to the masks but Peter would bet dollars on the expression that’s under the white and purple of Spiderwoman. Mouth open, eyes bugging out of her head, unsure whether to smile or not; exactly the same as the expression on Peter’s own face.

Miles says, “You know we better go make sure that the other’s haven’t gotten into their own trouble. You know what Ham’s like sometimes.”

“Yeah. Be right there, Miles,” Gwen says, gaze not moving away from Peter.

Miles shakes his head, “Riiiight.” But he zips off, up and in to the busier parts of the city.

“We should probably go and help him,” Gwen says, after a charged few seconds where she and Peter just stare at each other.

Peter shrugs, “Kid can look after himself for a few minutes.” He swallows, “so about that thought you were holding onto?”

He would give anything to not have the mask in the way when Gwen nods.

In unison the two of them raise their arms and fire off a line of webbing to raise them back onto the top of the bridge. It’s still the worst place in the world to talk. It’s the only place in the world where this talk can happen.

Gwen’s fingers pinch around the seam of Peter’s mask instead of reaching for her own.

“You don’t have to do that,” Peter says, around the hollow pit that’s opened up in his chest. “We can keep this masks on. That’s gotta be easier.”

Gwen just shakes her head, pulling the mask over Peter’s features. Her own mask quickly joins the red and blue bundle of fabric clutched in her fists.

The two of them stare at each other for a very long time.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says, Gwen’s voice doubling over his own.

Another two rounds of that and the two of them are laughing. So familiar in a way that makes Peter’s heart hurt all the more for it. Eventually, the laughter subsides and Gwen just smiles up at him, sad and uncertain. Peter’s sure that his face looks exactly the same.

“It’s like this all the time for you, isn’t it?” Gwen presses a hand to her chest. Her voice aching.

“Yeah,” Peter admits. “Though, a decade and change years gives me a distance that you don’t have the luxury of yet.”

Gwen’s open face turns shrewd, eyes narrowing as she tilts her chin up. “Really? The it gets better speech?”

“Heard that one before?”

“Too many times.” She gives him another mullish frown before looking out into the horizon. One knee curled up, arms wrapped around it in a loose hug. “Everyone’s always trying to tell me that time heals all wounds. But time doesn’t help the fact that Peter’s _gone._ It doesn’t help that he killed himself trying to make himself into a superhero. Into being something _just like me.”_ She spits out the last few words, raw hurt flashing over her face.

“And down there, fighting together. It didn’t feel like that last time, in the collider, or any of the other times since then. We were so in sync. You ducked, I punched, I jumped, you shot the web. It was like—-” her hand waves around in the air. “---it was like dancing. Like the best kind of partner dancing where no one's really leading anymore because you both know what the other’s gonna do so there’s no pint. You know? You ever danced like that Peter? Like you were one person instead of two?” She turns to him, eyes hunted, voice breaking. “Was that what we could of had, Peter?”

She’s not really talking to him anymore.

“Ah, Gwendy.” He can’t help it. The nickname falls out in a voice pitched just a bit too high. A memory that hurts like an old wound when it starts to rain. He draws her into a hug, gangly arms wrapping around her tense shoulders.

It takes a second, before Gwen relaxes, throwing herself into the hug and clinging to Peter. She sniffs, a sure sign that the waterworks are ready to go again. Peter had already had his growth spurt at sixteen. His body remembers the exact right way to tuck Gwen Stacy under his chin, even if Peter’s forgotten that to time and multiple head trauma.

Geeze, more thoughts like that and they’ll both be complaining about the sudden rise in pollen in this area of the city.

“When I realised who you were, it was like someone had shot a bullet straight into my head,” Peter murmurs into blonde curls. “I thought… Ah, I don’t know what I thought. Holy shit, that’s my Gwendy, maybe. I thought, that this was my chance. I’d ruined everything with MJ in my own universe, I was freaking dead in this one, and there you were: Gwen Stacy, my biggest mistake.” He smiles, self-deprecating. “Like you being here meant I hadn’t gotten her killed.” He pulls away, hands landing on Gwen’s shoulders, waits for until her eyes meet his before he continues. “But I was wrong. You’re not my Gwen Stacy. And I’m not your Peter Parker. I’m not going to die because of you.”

Gwen jerks back, a shocked inhale puffing up her chest. There’s a blink-and-miss-it flash of anger that turns her blue eyes dark. And then she just, looks at him, and crumples.

“That obvious, huh?”

“Standard Spiderman stakes,” Peter says, a call-back that they’ve all used one time or another. It’s a bad joke, but Gwen smiles anyway.

“Yeah.” Her gaze rakes across Peter’s face. Her eyes blue, open wounds. “You look just like him…”

All Peter can do is smile. “Surprised that someone as handsome as me once looked like this dorky nerd?”

“The Peter here was blond,” Gwen shoots back, picking up her own joking tone. “Come on, out of all possible universes, in every possible way, it’s unreal that the only thing that separates my Peter from you is 15 years and a pulse.”

There’s a moment after, where her mouth falls open, like she can’t believe she even said that.

“Life’s a bitch sometimes isn’t it,” Peter commiserates. He shifts, so that he’s sitting companionably next to Gwen again, one arm loosely around her waist.

Gwen sighs, and she tilts herself sideways until she’s tucked against Peter’s side. “Life can such a dick,” she declares. So out of character that Peter can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of him. “Are you going to be stuck like that?”

“Huh?” Peter asks.

“The whole, being my age thing. Are you going to be like that forever?”

Right. Never did manage to have that explanation did he. “Nah. I got a date with my resident magic-wielding supervillain and I’ll be back to normal in no time. Hey, you have a Mysterio in your dimension don’t you? Because let me tell you he has got to have the worst taste in headgear across the multiverse that is really saying something…”

Gwen lets him ramble on, bloodshot eyes slowly losing their haunted look, tears drying away as Peter re-enacts the highlights of his Spiderman career. And maybe it’s the air, or the way Gwen’s folded into his side in a ghost of a memory despite the shaved head, eyebrow piercing, and Spider-gear. Maybe it’ the hot-dog Peter ate for lunch. (Maybe it’s the bridge. This damn bridge) that makes Peter say, “He’d be proud of you.”

Gwen just gives him a look, inscrutable and oh so familiar. Once there was a lifetime where Peter Parker would have spent hours deciphering one of Gwen Stacy’s famous looks.

“Yeah.” Gwen tucks herself back into Peter’s side, the two of them looking out into the city that they’ve dedicated their lives to protecting. “Hey Peter?”

“Yeah?”

“She’d be proud of you too.”

 

 THE END

 


End file.
